4.13.2006

Ava Thursday: Easter Egg Hunt

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With Easter just around the corner, how about a nice Easter Egg Hunt drawn by your friendly-neighborhood Ava-girl? And to show you just how much Ava is into Easter, she drew this about two weeks ago. No lie. It's been taped up to the back of our front door ever since, a gentle reminder to the all-seeing, all-knowing Easter Bunny that chocolates and candies better be in full force come Easter Sunday. Actually, Ava's not that pushy when it comes to candy-driven events and holidays, but whenever I look up at the door, I can't help but get this sense of urgency, you know?

A couple of interesting things about this drawing: for one thing, it's big. Like 11x14 inches big. Don't ask me where she got such a large piece of paper because I didn't even know that we had such a thing lying around the house. Another thing, I love the way that she's drawn little motion dashes for one of the bunnies at the bottom of the page there to show that it's hopping. I don't recall ever drawing dashes like that for her before, so I'm curious as to where she got the idea. I also love all the smiley faces -- wouldn't you just love to hang out in a place where everything has a smiley face? In Easter Worlds like this one, everything must be happy and show it, of course.

One of my favorite parts to this drawing is the little girl reaching up to get the egg out of the tree. Subtle things like that bring a smile to my face every time.

Foreground, middle ground, background! At least I assume that's why the girl on the right is smaller, because she's farther back. Also, the triangle indicating the torso is tilted just right to show how a stretching body would shift.

The flower has pistils or stamen(s). A detail that's outside of the standard "symbol" for flowers.

Not sure if I'm rooting for the bunny or the carrot. I can''t tell if the black spot is a rabbit hole, a shadow, or a marker to indicate where the carrot jumped from, but it comes across as a shadow which helps to show that the ground is down there and the carrot is up there a bit.

The Icarus cloud has drifted too close (hence the expression of dismay) to the sun, who, contrary to popular myth, is a girl. I also like how the clouds have wide-set eyes to fit their wider faces.

I don't want to ruin the fun of drawing by over-analysing everything, but it really looks like the kid is really engaged with the process of drawing itself, coming up with some solutions on her own and what seems to me to be adopting ideas she picked up from somewhere else (Dad?). Not just copying, but more like "Hey, that's how you do that. Lemme try it."